Another homicide occurred Friday night around 7:30 p.m. near the intersection of Cherry Street and Edgewood Avenue.

The Daily Record received official confirmation around 8 a.m. Saturday when it was reported that investigators were then still at the scene. The name of the victim will not be released until family members are notified.

The Friday night incident represents the seventh homicide of 2013 in Roswell. If one includes the murder of Tacorey Singleton, the Friday night homicide is the eighth in Chaves County as a whole.

The Edgewood homicide also is the second reported homicide this week. Police responded to a shooting call, around 1 a.m. Thursday, in the parking lot of Variety Liquor Store and Lounge, 1100 W. Second [auth] St., where officers discovered 25-year-old Victor Oaxaco, who succumbed to his injuries.

At this stage of their investigation, the police are not willing to say if the two homicides and the other shooting incidents inside the city limits are connected.

It has been a dark week in Roswell, starting Monday morning when two officers, one from the Roswell Police Department and one from New Mexico State Police, were injured, and a man and one woman were killed following a shoot-out and a multi-car accident on Hwy. 285.

Later that night, an RPD officer was dispatched to Eastern New Mexico Center, 405 W. Country Club Rd., to take a report about a shooting in Roswell. The following day, a release reported an ongoing investigation in the 300 block of Oakwood Street, after a man who went to a residence to collect a debt was shot multiple times and hospitalized for his injuries.

The investigation of the midnight shooting led to not one, but three searches of a residence in the 3000 block of Encanto Drive, Tuesday evening, where explosive devices were located. People from adjacent homes were evacuated.

The area from Futura, Delicado and Encanto drives to Vista Parkway was blocked for nearly two days as the Roswell Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the New Mexico State Police Explosive Ordnance Division searched the home, with Roswell Fire Department on standby assist.

Some of the devices were detonated, and others were “made safe” and transported out of the community.

On Friday morning, the Daily Record received a report of a confirmed drive-by shooting Thursday night in the 500 block of South Wyoming Avenue.

There are no indicators that the officer-involved shooting/accident in the county and the incidents in the city are connected.

By Saturday afternoon, investigators had retreated from the scene of the Friday night homicide on Cherry and Edgewood. The tape is gone and the street is deserted, except for two groups of people repairing their homes. The faces of the residents are openly hostile to strangers and people unwilling to talk about the previous night’s incident.

Related Posts

Jessica Palmer has had 26 books published, by such firms as Pocket Books, Harper Collins, McFarland, and Scholastic. She was nominated for the HWA's award for best first novel and listed in Germany's Lexicon as one of the top 200 writers of the 20th Century. Her works have been published in every English-speaking country in the world and translated into Italian, Danish, Japanese, Russian, German and Rumanian. In her spare time, she works with wildlife as a wildlife rescuer.